


Homebound Train

by mousapelli



Category: Free!
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Moving In Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7305208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousapelli/pseuds/mousapelli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After so long, it's hard for both of them to find a place that feels like home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homebound Train

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 2016 SASO bonus round prompt fill: prompt was Rin saying that he thought a place near the ocean would be relaxing for Haru.

It's a fight that neither of them wants to actually be a fight, but somehow they can't exactly help it. Both of them need a place to be a home, after all of the traveling and training and hotels and dormitories, but they can't even decide in what time zone that home ought to be, much less what kind of place or what it should contain. With Makoto and Sousuke in Tokyo for coaching and Nagisa and Rei in Osaka for Rei's job, even Iwatobi isn't exactly home anymore, plus is about a million miles away from the airport access they so clearly need. 

They look at tons of places, but none of them seem right. Rin hates some of them. Haru hates nearly all of them. He's always got some complaint that makes Rin grit his teeth because they border on ridiculous, like that the walls are the wrong color or the windows are the wrong shape or there's an odd number of closets. 

"I can buy you paint, you know!" Rin snaps. He is trying to hold to his temper but they've looked at four places today, the lady from the realtor's office probably thinks they are insane, and he's really, really sick of looking at places. "I'm an Olympian and so are you and we can afford some fucking paint for the walls!"

Haru looks Rin in the eye. He has this silent way of doing it which means "I'm not going to argue out loud but I refuse completely and immovably" which used to be a surefire way of escalating teenaged Rin into a shouting fit. Mid-20s Rin turns away from Haru to close his eyes and take a very long breath through his nose because he doesn't want the lady from the realtor's office to think that they are any more insane than she already thinks they are. Or than they actually are. 

"Could we have a minute?" Rin finally asks, and the woman assures them that's fine, probably glad to be free of them as she steps out into the hallway and closes the door. He takes another minute yet before he feels like he might be calm enough to face Haru. "Haru…"

"You don't want to live here," Haru says. It sounds flat and calm when he says it, sure, and it's so absolutely maddening how well Haru knows him and how right he is. 

"I want to live somewhere!" Rin says, throwing his hands in the air. "I want to live somewhere with you! Please, Haru, I just…I need a home. I need to be able to come _home_."

There's a flicker of sympathy in Haru's blue eyes, but the rest of his face doesn't move. "This isn't it, though."

"No place is going to feel like home until we live in it!" Rin feels so, so exasperated, by Haru, by all of these places which aren't home, by all of it. "I can't do any more of this today, let's get rid of her and go have dinner."

It takes a couple days for Rin to calm the rest of the way down, and after that he goes online and does some looking of his own, no realtor lady or Haru over his shoulder. For some reason the distance the screen puts between him and the places makes it less frustrating to dismiss them. Closing tabs is a little satisfying, honestly. 

When he finds the one, he knows right away. But he's still never going to tell Haru he was right. 

A few days later when they both have a free afternoon, Rin gets Haru on a train to Yokohama on the pretense of meeting Makoto for chinese food. Haru starts asking questions when they get off at an unfamiliar stop, but Rin ignores him and leads the way. Let Haru experience stubbornness for once. 

The condo isn't the hugest, but it's in a quiet building and has an even number of closets. Mostly importantly it has an amazing view of Tokyo Bay. Haru stops cold in his tracks when he realizes, and Rin heaves a sigh of relief with the breath he's been holding.

"It isn't Tokyo," Rin says. "And that's not quite the ocean. But it's pretty close to both of those things, right?"

"Yeah," Haru says, barely paying attention to Rin as he smushes his face against the glass of the sliding door. "I think this is pretty good."

Rin grabs Haru around the waist and hugs him tightly from behind, and does not give even one half of a damn about what the lady from the realtor's office thinks about it.


End file.
